Aikido – martial art for your soul and body.

It could happen that there was a period in your life when you’ve asked yourself “Why not to go into martial arts?” Pretty wise decision if we are talking about your mental and physical health.

There’s a huge variety of martial arts in the world with their own cultural aspects and specific philosophy, but the main essence of them is harmony of your mental and physical state. Thus, if you aren’t very impetuous person or you don’t like to be kicked all the time, then Aikido is you choice!

To start with, we need to know a little bit of history of this beautiful martial art. As Holy Wiki says “Aikido was developed by Morihei Ueshiba as a synthesis of his martial studies, philosophy, and religious beliefs.” Yep, it was his own experience unified in one separate martial art.

As Osensei said there was an accident on the war. He saw a bullet flying right in his face. At this moment all stopped and he found out that he can escape this threat by stepping from attack line. In such a way he discovered one of the main principles of Aikido – stepping from attack line.

It’s important to add that the main goal of Aikido is to defend the practitioner while also protecting the attacker from injury. Sounds silly, but as Osensei said “The greatest victory is victory over oneself.” And it’s true, because nowadays only weak people hurt other one even if it’s a killer or criminal – it’s your dignity, don’t loose it! Overcome yourself.

Continuing with the story, I would like to say that the name itself – Aikido, consists from 3 kanji – Ai (unity, joining), Ki (energy, spirit), Do (way, path). So as we see, it’s a way of harmonizing the energy. Pretty hard to understand though it’s fully describes the essence of martial art.

Aikido was first brought to the rest of the world in 1951 by Minoru Mochizuki with a visit to France where he introduced Aikido techniques to judo students. That was the official start of spreading Aikido throughout the Globe. In such a way, more and more people started to involve into this beautiful art.

Not to mention that there’s a huge amount of criticism. They say that it suffers from a lack of realism in training. But it’s hard to say when you are trying to beat the master. Nobody tells about keeping that beautiful form. The core is the technique which is close to reality. Tastes differ though every opinion is important.

That was the main story of Aikido. We will continue to talk about details of it and of course the techniques in the next articles. Thanks for reading and take care of yourselves!

7 thoughts on “Aikido – martial art for your soul and body.”

Aikido is a great martial art. I studied it for a few years, admittedly because of watching Steven Seagal movies. But it is an extremely effective martial art for both mind and body. Thanks for a great post.